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Diabetes Prevention Services: Cost Savings and the Role of Incentives

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is a program that has been found to prevent or delay the onset of Type 2 diabetes. The Bipartisan Policy Center retained AIR to develop a financial model of the costs and benefits of a similar, but smaller, program.

The key findings of the model include the following:

There is a large population with pre-diabetes in the U.S. who could benefit from a diabetes prevention program with a significant number unaware that they have pre-diabetes.

Approximately 28 percent of the population meet several of the criteria for pre-diabetes.

Only about 1 in 6 of these individuals have been told they have pre-diabetes.

A diabetes prevention program can produce overall cost savings which increase over time for an individual.

Related Work

Approximately 28 percent of U.S. adults have several of the risk factors for pre-diabetes but only one out of six are aware of it, according to an AIR study that found providing services that would prevent or delay the onset of the disease could generate savings for the federal government and private providers.